Infamous Wiki:Manual of Style
This Manual of Style outlines a standard of clean, consistent formatting for articles on this wiki. The formatting described here is a guideline and can be overridden where circumstances warrant it. These guidelines will never be unerringly perfect for every situation. This is Infamous Wiki's Manual of Style. This article was made to give editors a guideline to writing, and should not be considered perfect for every situation. However, following the Manual of Style will ease problematic situation, such as reverted edits, edit wars and other conflicts concerning editing. These guidelines are a summary of the most important guidelines for the inFamous Wiki, but a more expansive set of style guidelines can be found on Wikipedia at Wikipedia Manual of Style. A sample article based off these guidelines can be found on inFamous Wiki:Manual of Style/Sample. Article layout One of the most important parts of wiki editing is how to structure an article. The structure is a powerful thing: it dictates what information the reader reads and when he or she reads it. It can influence what people contribute, where it goes, and how it might be written. Structure has the power to inform or confuse the same way good or bad writing does. Keep a well structured article, and you're more likely to have a high quality one. Organize sections in an article in a hierarchical structure like you would an outline. Keep it logical, but feel free to forsake strict logic for readability. Try to make each section of an article necessary, and try to keep seriousness editing an article. The following sections will give you an overall view concerning how to keep an article structure. Quote Longer articles should always be introduced with a quote. For characters, the quote must not necessarily be from the subject, but from someone speaking of the subject. Longer sections of a very long article should also be introduced with a quote, if any. A quote can be written using the template. Lead section Unless an article is a stub, it should start with an introductory lead section, before the first subheading. This first section should not be given a heading in any way. The table of contents, if displayed, appears after the lead section and before the first subheading. The lead should be capable of standing alone as a concise overview of the article, establishing context, and explaining why the subject is interesting or notable. It should consist of at maximum two paragraphs, and should be written in a clear and accessible style so that the reader is encouraged to read the rest of the article. If possible, make the title the subject of the first sentence of the article. For example, write "Cole MacGrath was a Conduit with Electrokinetic and Electromagnetic powers." The first time the article mentions the title, put it in bold using three apostrophes. Writing article title produces article title. Avoid other uses of bold in the first sentence, except for alternative titles of an article; for example: Vermaak 88, also referred to as the Ice Gang, was a south-African military group. Follow the normal rules for italics in choosing whether to put part or all of the title in italics. This will mainly apply to the titles of books and games: Infamous is the first game of the Infamous series. Do not put links in the bold reiteration of the title in the article's lead sentence. For example, " Electromagnetic Powers are some of the primary powers of Infamous..." versus "Electromagnetic Powers are some of the primary powers of Infamous." Table of contents A table of contents will automatically appear in articles with a minimum of four headings (unless forced by the below options). By default the inFamous Wiki's Table of Contents will appear to the left, above the first heading. * To the force a TOC position (left-aligned): __TOC__ * To completely remove the TOC from a page: The table of contents can be right-aligned - but only if it is very long (over 15 entries) and an information box is not occupying the top-right corner of the article (rare exceptions exist). * Right-aligned TOC that floats next to text: Section headings Use the (two equal signs) style markup for main headings, equivalent to . Do not use a single =. This is because a single = creates an heading which is already used by the page header and would be bad coding. Also, do not use wiki links in subject headings. When edited, these sections become confusing in the edit history because of the link code. Consider instead putting the word in the first or second sentence of the section and linking it there, or simply use the . Capitalize the first letter only of the first word and of any proper nouns in a heading and leave all of the other letters in lowercase. Use "Founding and history", not "Founding and History". Note that this is different from most section title rules you'll encounter elsewhere. Avoid special characters in headings, such as an ampersand (&), a plus sign (+), curly braces ({}), or square braces ([]). In place of the ampersand, use the word "and" unless the ampersand is part of a formal name. Always keep headings short and simple. Headings are guidelines to your page's structure and should inform the reader rather than confuse. To keep it short, avoid unnecessary words or redundancy in headings, i.e. avoid a, an, and the, pronouns, repeating the article title, and so on. Also, try to avoid giving identical titles to different sections. Sorting sections With some rare exceptions, sections should always be sorted as: #'Lead section' - this is no named section, but is basically the top of the page. Should always contain infoboxes, tags such as and and a brief description of the article. For more information, see Lead Section on this article. #'Biography'/'History' - the biography or history of the subject. #'Appearance and personality' #'Powers and abilities' #'Various other sections' #'Gallery' #'Trivia' #'References' ''NOTE: Naming of sections may vary from article to article, depending on the subject. '' Non-Canon Some articles, like evil karma or Festival of Blood content are non-canon, and are either given a tag or mentioned in trivia or Karma choice. Although some things, such as names and locations that are unconfirmed or used by a random NPC character should be ignored and not mentioned at all. Examples would be faction names, objects and locations, or random guesses. All of these that are unconfirmed should be ignored, and the unneeded non-canon information should be deleted or ignored until someone knows the official name. Images Images make an article memorable and pretty. They can speak where words fail. At the same time, misplaced or untidy images can detract from an article. When choosing images, keep in mind placement, size, and the appropriateness of the image to the section. Let images flow with the text instead of break it up. Large images such as screenshots should use the "thumb" (example: ) option which displays large images as thumbnails. Images should generally be right aligned to enhance readability by allowing a smooth flow of text down the left margin - the "thumb" option does this by default. If an infobox is not being used in an article, a right aligned picture in the lead section is encouraged. When placing an image on an article, make sure the image features the subject of the article itself. As the goal is to have all articles contain at least one image, in rare cases an exception must be made. For more information, see . Galleries When an article has many images, or can be improved by having more, and having inline images be detract from the readability of an articles, the use of a section is encouraged. Image:Example.jpg|Caption Image:Example.jpg|Caption Infamous features both an evil timeline and a good one. Here on inFamous Wiki the good one is considered canon. If you wish to add an image of an event only featured in the evil timeline, that image must be placed in the gallery. Tables Tables should use a "class" design when possible, and should include as little 'fancy' formatting as possible. Tables can also be made sortable by adding a "sortable" class. For long tables, it is recommended to create an "alt" class to alternate row colours to enhance readability. The below examples use "toccolours" as a class, but this is only for the purposes of demonstration, and isn't generally recommended. With row headings, table caption, sortable | |} Without row headings, with alt rows | |} Navigation boxes Navigation boxes are templates used to navigate the reader to different articles of the same subject. Generally they should be placed at the end of an article, above the categories. Navigation boxes can be found in the Templates category, and currently includes and Article message boxes Add me! You may want to look at Wikipedia:Article message boxes. See also, references, external links, and navigational tables The last sections, if they exist, should always be sorted as "Trivia", followed by "See also", followed by "References", followed by "External links". In the case of "See also", use bullets to list the internal links. Under the references section should be placed . Finally, in the external links should be all external links. Categories Categories should be added to the end of an article - a full list can be found on . They take the form Category:Categoryname. All articles should be accessible starting from Category:Main category, via subcategories. Categories should almost always be universal, with some exceptions. For example, such categories as Evil Alignment, Allies or Enemies are non-universal and is from a Cole-perspective. However, categories such as Factions, ' There are, however, exceptions. Those includes, but are not limited to, categories such as '''Good Side Missions', Evil Side Missions, Gameplay, Collectibles etc. Disambiguation A disambiguation line is sometimes put at the beginning of an article to link to another article with the same or similar title. The line should be italicized and indented once. Most usually contain the phrase, "Were you looking for X?" For example: : Were you looking for "Infamous (series)", the actual series? The template can also be used for this purpose. Disambiguation pages works in a similar fashion, but instead only lists the articles of the same name or similar name. This is mostly done when three or more articles share the same or a very similar name. Every disambiguation page should be marked with the at the top of the article. Quotations Format a long quote (over four lines) as an italicized block quotation, which will be indented from both margins. Do not enclose the block quote in quotation marks. To format a block quotation, do not use the wiki indentation mark ":" — instead, use the HTML element. Grammar Grammar is a writer's toolbox. You can't build good sentences without knowing how to use your tools. Since a wiki article must be as clear as possible for all the people reading it, editors must keep close to correct grammar standards to ensure clear communication. Capitalization Titles such as doctor or agent start with a capital letter when used as a title (followed by a name): "Doctor Wolfe", not "doctor Wolfe". When used generically, they should be in lower case: "Lucy Kuo was an NSA agent." The correct formal name of an office is treated as a proper noun. Hence: "Cole was the Demon of Empire City" Writing Notes in Spelling We now come to the meat of an article: the words themselves. When you're editing wikis, you're both academic and artist. You have to be accurate, but you also have to be interesting. Neither one can dominate; you have to skillfully balance both. Keep your writing concise. Don't use two words where one will do. Keeping your writing simple will make it easy to understand and easy to expand on. Use complete sentences whenever possible. When you write, use grammar as a toolbox: know the rules, but only break them on purpose. Check your spelling and grammar. Do not use 'u' in place of 'you' or '2' in place of 'to'. Write the way you would for a class paper or a newspaper article. Keep all of the topics you cover within the scope of the article. What that means is, you don't need to give a detailed history of humans on the page about Empire City. Consider the article's title as your point of origin and write from that perspective. Make use of the wiki's ability to link to more detailed articles or external sources for more information. Write from an impersonal perspective.' Do not use "I." For example, do not write, "The Amp was designed by Cole's best friend, Zeke Dunbar, as far as I know." Avoid drawing attention to the author (yourself) whatsoever Write in third person. Never use "you". Keep it in third person and impersonal: ##Example 1 ###'INCORRECT': You should later use (should always be written in Past Tense) the Lightning Strike to defeat the Beast. ###'CORRECT': Cole later used the Lightning Strike to defeat the Beast. ##'You' sometimes fall through the ground in inFamous. This is a glitch. ##'Cole' sometimes fall through the ground in inFamous. This is a gltich. Be bold. If you know something is wrong, correct it. If you think you could word something better, write it. If an article has a glaring deficiency, fill it. Even if your first attempt isn't golden, you can fix it later or someone else will come along and fix it for you. Don't be afraid to screw up. Spelling in Words There are many different types of English. Examples are American English and British English. To prevent this leading to conflicts, inFamous Wiki aim to be as native as possible, and aim to use words that are commonly used in all English nationalities. However, when it comes to spelling a word, American English is almost always the proper one to use. For more information, please see the examples below. Also see American and British English spelling differences on Wikipedia. Naming Here on Infamous Wiki every article should make use of similar naming. This list will guide you to use of correct naming. ﻿ See also *Project:Manual of Style/Sample - a sample wiki article. *Category:Policies - the various policies of Infamous Wiki. External links *Wikipedia's Manual of Style Category:Policies